FUCK it is good

>>24557433 (OP)
It’s terrible. I love Saunders’ short stories and articles, but this book was incredibly cringe-inducing.

>>24557444
how it won all the prizes then?

>>24557461
Prizes are about making a point, not necessarily good art. But I do think anon is being scathing about Lincoln in the Bardo.

>>24557433 (OP)
Disagree. It's thin. It's far too thin to be a novel, it should have been a novella at most. Only the last part was interesting, the rest was inconsequential.

>>24557433 (OP)
Can’t get into this. Pastoralia was funny as fuck though.

>>24557444
Why is it bad?

Let’s flip this. Tell me WHY it’s good and worth my time.

>>24558806
It’s been a few years since I read it, but I remember finding it really disappointing. Saunders’s short stories are great because of his innovative and thought-provoking premises, but those premises only work because the stories are short—he’s only required to induce the reader to very briefly suspend disbelief, meaning that there isn’t time for him to lose momentum or for the reader’s immersion in the world of the story to break or for weak spots or inconsistencies become obvious. His short stories also never really require him to assume multiple fleshed-out perspectives—it’s easy to write about some strange phenomenon from one isolated point of view, but it’s much harder to sustain the conceit when you’re dealing with many different points of view.

In Lincoln in the Bardo he tries to structure a longer and more complex text around a typically Saundersian idea, but it quickly falls apart because it lacks substance. I really dislike the whole premise, because it just isn’t sophisticated or developed enough to provide adequate plot for a novel. It comes across as silly, rather than as charmingly eccentric. Many of the characters’ perspectives seem contrived and unconvincing, and it’s full of juvenile and crude attempts at humour that clash with the book’s more serious themes in a way that’s incredibly off-putting and bizarre. And I’m not one to criticize books for expressing progressive ideals, if it’s done with skill and subtlety, but the whole exploration of gender and racial issues has a weirdly preachy and overly earnest feeling. The book attempts to assume the perspectives of all of these diverse characters from the 18th and 19th century, but the whole time I was excruciatingly aware of the fact that it was written by a milquetoast neoliberal white man who lacks meaningful first-person insight into these things and is desperate to show off how empathetic and concerned about the state of the world he is, and to align himself with the “right side of history.” It carries the same distinctly saccharine, neurotic, absurdly sincere feeling that pervades a lot of the books that were put out by writers of his demographic in the mid to late 2010s. It won the Booker Prize in the same year that Trump took office, and those two events were in no way unconnected, if that makes sense.

>>24558806
It’s been a few years since I read it, but I remember finding it really disappointing. Saunders’s short stories are great because of his innovative and thought-provoking premises, but those premises only work because the stories are short—he’s only required to induce the reader to very briefly suspend disbelief, meaning that there isn’t time for him to lose momentum, or for the reader’s immersion in the world of the story to break, or for weak spots and inconsistencies to become obvious. His short stories also never really require him to assume multiple fleshed-out perspectives—it’s easy to write about some strange phenomenon from one isolated point of view, but it’s much harder to sustain the conceit when you’re dealing with many different points of view.

In Lincoln in the Bardo he tries to structure a longer and more complex text around a typically Saundersian idea, but it quickly falls apart because it lacks substance. I really dislike the whole premise, because it just isn’t sophisticated or developed enough to provide adequate plot for a novel. It comes across as silly, rather than as charmingly eccentric. Many of the characters’ perspectives seem contrived and unconvincing, and it’s full of juvenile and crude attempts at humour that clash with the book’s more serious themes in a way that’s incredibly off-putting and bizarre.

And I’m not one to criticize books for expressing progressive ideals, if it’s done with skill and subtlety, but the whole exploration of gender and racial issues has a weirdly preachy and overly earnest feeling. The book attempts to assume the perspectives of all of these diverse characters from the 18th and 19th century, but the whole time I was excruciatingly aware of the fact that it was written by a milquetoast neoliberal white man who lacks meaningful first-person insight into these things and is desperate to show off how empathetic and concerned about the state of the world he is, and to align himself with the “right side of history.” It carries the same distinctly saccharine, neurotic, absurdly sincere feeling that pervades a lot of the books that were put out by writers of his demographic in the mid to late 2010s. It won the Booker Prize in the same year that Trump took office, and those two events were in no way unconnected, if that makes sense. It reeks of that whole cultural moment, and will not age well.

>>24558806
>Why is it bad?
It's full of cliches that are fine in a short story but lack depth in the longer format of a novel.
>>24558812
>WHY it’s good
Blending actual historical records of the same event with fictive narratives in service of themes relating to memory and the subjective nature of history is interesting.
>worth my time
If we're being honest it's diminishing returns after the second chapter.

>>24557433 (OP)
If you read the book and liked it, why not put some effort into your post and explain what you liked about it? Why post this lazy three-word bait?

>>24557433 (OP)
If you read the book and liked it, why not put some effort into your post and explain what you liked about it? Why make this lazy thread without even a full sentence of commentary?

>>24559024
Can you recommend some of his short stories?

>>24557433 (OP)
gay cover

I don't read anything with the words "tour de force" on the cover or dustpage.

>>24560957
you don’t read at all

>>24560957
That Lance Armstrong thing happened like twenty years ago. It's time to get over it.

>>24557433 (OP)
Retardo in the Bardo

>>24560957
Based.

>>24562911
Back again to bump the thread?

Saunders should have stuck to short stories. This was a stinker.

>>24562937
Yep. This one was me >>24559053. That guy is based for pointing out the retardation of the cliched marketing blurbs on the cover (I myself would have pointed out the one word pseudo-reviews though, lol).

>>24559266
Tenth of December is my favourite of his short story collections; my favourites from it are Puppy and The Semplica Girl Diaries (available on the New Yorker website). I’d also recommend most of the stories from CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia; I haven’t read the other two short story collections he’s published, but apparently they aren’t as good. His nonfiction book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is solid as well.

>>24557433 (OP)
Only Booker winner I DNF'ed. I just couldn't get myself to give a rats ass about some random dead voices.

>>24564556
thanks. i did read the pond book which i thought was very insightful

>>24557433 (OP)
As a non American I always thought the American civil war was that, a civil war. Turns out it was an imperialistic power trying to keep a sovereign nation subjugated. No wonder America became an imperialistic power after all and that wherever they invade, with either soft or hard power, they impose worshipping blacks on the natives.

>>24564556
>The Semplica Girl Diaries
what was this about?

>>24567190
Cry more confederate scum

>>24567962
It’s structured as a series of diary entries written by a financially struggling father who is desperate to keep up with the Joneses. Telling you any more than that would spoil the reveal. The whole point of the story is that you slowly clue into what is going on as the narrator gradually reveals more and more horrifying details.

I tried reading it but it made no sense.

>>24557433 (OP)
Why is EVERY book put out in the last 20 years either some sterile effeminate minimalist prose or or le epic 100 miles an hour internetseque schizoprose? It's so formulaic and overdone yet everybody acts like it's some revolutionary work of art never done before.

>>24567190
>As a non American
Why not specify the country if you’re going out of your way to let us know you’re not American, saar.

>>24568305
He isn't wrong. The US deludes itself into thinking the civil war was about ending slavery when the reality is that the British already did it and Lincoln wanted to kill Jeffersonianism.

>>24568303
They’ll do anything to compensate for the poor prose. That’s the biggest issue these days: everything is either so terse and economical it’s boring as shit, or they just throw a thesaurus on the page and hope no one is the wiser.
Nobody reads, everybody wants to write a book.

>>24568222
>spoil the reveal
What is it? I already read it.

>>24568411
If you already read it, then why do you need me to tell you?

>>24568305
Chile.

>>24568466
i am ESL. i need you explain

>>24568934
Figure it out yourself.

>>24568942
>This cruel practice includes taking girls in undesirable situations from third-world countries and having them hang by their heads in wealthy people’s front yards, essentially degrading them into human lawn decorations.

>>24569046
Correct.